The Awareness Center closed. We operated from April 30, 1999 - April 30, 2014. This site is being provided for educational & historical purposes.
We were the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault (JCASA); and were dedicated to ending sexual violence in Jewish communities globally. We did our best to operate as the make a wish foundation for Jewish survivors of sex crimes. In the past we offered a clearinghouse of information, resources, support and advocacy.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Suspected of raping a female soldier while on vacation in the southern town of Eilat. Another soldier is suspected of witnessing the rape without trying to prevent it. If you have more information about this case, please forward it to The Awareness Center.

IDF troops suspected of raping female soldier while on vacation in southern town of Eilat; fourth soldier accused of witnessing the rape without trying to prevent it.

Three IDF soldiers are suspected of raping a female soldier while on vacation in the southern town of Eilat.

Another soldier is suspected of witnessing the rape without trying to prevent it.

The Eilat Magistrates Court extended the soldiersâ¤TM remand on Sunday by three days.

In a complaint filed with Eilat Police, the female soldier, a resident of a central Israel town, said at Eilat’s “Platinum” nightclub last Thursday when she met a soldier and accompanied him to his hotel room at the end of the evening.

According to the complainant, three of the soldierâ¤TMs friends arrived a short while later; the soldier she had met in the nightclub and two others proceeded to rape her while the fourth looked on, she claimed.

The three soldiers are accused of rape and the fourth is accused of failing to prevent a crime.

Military Police are not involved in the investigation, as the soldiers were on vacation when the alleged crime was committed.

Eilat Police said an indictment is expected to be filed on Tuesday at the Beer Sheva District Court.

Three Israel Defense Forces soldiers were arrested at the end of the week under suspicion of raping a female soldier on Wednesday night in Eilat.

One additional soldier suspected of watching the rape and not doing anything to prevent it was also arrested.

A court on Sunday extended the remand of the four soldiers by three days.

On Tuesday, police will file indictments against the soldiers and ask the court to keep them in detention until the end of legal proceedings against them.

The female soldier filed a complaint with police on Thursday. She told officers that the previous night she arrived in the southern resort town on leave and went out to a dance club. During the party, she met a soldier and joined him in his hotel room, located some seven kilometers from the night club.

The female soldier told police she was raped in the hotel by the soldier and two of his friends, also soldiers on leave in Eilat.

The female soldier said an additional individual watched her rape and did nothing to stop it.

Upon receiving the female soldier?s testimony, police officers rushed to the hotel and arrested the soldiers.

They rejected the accusations against them and claimed the female soldier agreed to have sex with all three of them.

Deputy commander of the Eilat police station, Avi Asoulin, said Israel Police rather than Military Police is investigating the case - despite the fact that both the victim and the suspects are soldiers - because the alleged crime took place in a civilian area.

Some of the information on The Awareness Center's web pages may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.

We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this update for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Rabbi David Kaye has resigned from Conservative Judaism's
rabbinical association, but the title of "rabbi" cannot be taken away from
him.

Such a designation is earned when one graduates from
rabbinical school, according to leaders in the Conservative and Reconstructionist
movement.

Kaye submitted his resignation to the Rabbinical Assembly
a few days before the airing of the Nov. 4 Dateline NBC hidden camera
investigation of sexual predators on the Internet in which he was
ensnared.

A former rabbi at Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac,
Kaye also resigned his position with the teen educational group Panim: The
Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values due to the Dateline program.

Rabbi Joel Meyers, the R.A.'s executive vice president,
said that giving up membership in the organization essentially means that
Kaye is "no longer a member of the Conservative rabbinate" and "can't function
as a Conservative rabbi."

The Awareness Center, an organization advocating for
the rights of sexual abuse victims in the Jewish community, has been urging
its supporters to ask that Kaye's s'micha, or rabbinic ordination, be revoked.
But Meyers said that "we can't take his s'micha away" because he "earned
his degrees," and "unless fraud was found in achieving the degree, he has
the degree."

Kaye was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical
College two decades ago before joining the Conservative movement's rabbinical
association after he was hired at the Conservative Har Shalom. The president
of the RRC, Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, said revoking one's ordination "is not
something we ever do, nor do I think it's doable."

"You can't take away the fact that he successfully
fulfilled the requirements for graduation," said Ehrenkrantz.

He noted that rabbinical groups like the R.A. act as
licensing-type organizations, and losing membership in such a group effectively
tells the public that a rabbi has not conducted himself properly.

He compared the situation to a doctor who engages in
misconduct the physician does not lose the title doctor, but can
lose his or her license.

Kaye, however, would still, for example, be able to
officiate at a wedding if a couple desired.

The rabbi also has left his teaching position at B'nai
Israel Congregation's Hebrew high school, according to the Rockville Conservative
synagogue's Rabbi Jonathan Schnitzer.

Kaye had been teaching a Tuesday evening class for
the post-confirmation class of 11th- and 12th-graders and had led the Shabbat
teen minyan since the beginning of the school year. He resigned those posts
three days before the Dateline program aired, Schnitzer said this week.

Schnitzer said that the teen sessions were "always
in a group" and that the shul had not received any complaints about his
conduct.

Criminal charges are still not expected against Kaye.
A Montgomery County Police Department spokesperon said that it has not received
any criminal complaints or been provided with other information that would
trigger an investigation of the rabbi, although an inquiry could be opened
in the future if such facts did arise.

The Fairfax County Police Department said once again
this week that it still does not anticipate filing charges because of both
jurisdictional issues and reservations about the methods of Perverted Justice,
the group that partnered with Dateline in the investigation. The group's
volunteers pose as children on the Internet in order to expose potential
predators.

Fairfax County police have noted that even though the
alleged predators were lured to a house in Virginia, the Perverted Justice
volunteer chatters were based in Michigan and Kaye and many of the other
alleged predators lived in Maryland. With the alleged crimes crossing state
lines, it is unclear if the FBI could get involved in the case.

A spokesperson for the FBI's Baltimore field office
could not say at this point whether it would be investigated.

Police in the Negev have arrested a senior driver licensing inspector and a driving instructor on suspicion of having offered to grant a young woman a license if she agreed to have sexual relations with both of them, Israel Radio reported Tuesday.

It said the driving instructor made the offer to the woman, a resident of the southern town of Netivot, after she failed a licensing test for the third time.

"The instructor proposed that she have sexual relations with him and with the senior licensing inspector, and, in return, she would receive her driver's license," the radio said.

The woman then informed the police, who began an undercover investigation. Detectives amassed evidence against the two on additional cases in which they allegedly arranged to grant licenses in return for favors, it said.

Acting on the advice of detectives, the woman invited the inspector to her apartment Monday night, after the two agreed that he was to have sex with her that night, whereupon she would re-take the driving test next week, and pass.

The inspector arrived at the house, and the ensuing conversation was taped by police who were hiding in the apartment. The officers then jumped from their hiding places and arrested the man, as well as the driving instructor.

Some of the information on The Awareness Center's web pages may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.

We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this update for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

A player for Maccabi Haifa, one of Israel's leading soccer teams, was arrested Sunday on suspicion that he sexually assaulted the 20-year-old girlfriend of a friend of his.

His remand was set at three days by the Netanya Magistrate's Court. The court also issued an injunction prohibiting the release of his name.

Police say the alleged assault took place Friday night. According to the charges, the three arrived at the player's friend's house in the Netanya area of central Israel and the player entered the room where his friend and the friend's girlfriend were sleeping. The young woman said the player tried to assault her more than once, but she resisted.

In a separate off-the-field development, the Maccabi Haifa player suspected of sexual abuse and assault will appear again today before the Netanya Magistrate's Court for a remand hearing. The court is expected to agree to the defense's request to release the player from police custody, and place him under house arrest.

Police yesterday offered the suspect a polygraph test, but the player's lawyer, Moshe Sohemi, opposed the move, despite his client's consent. "If he comes out as telling the truth, will they release him?" Sohemi asked. "Why should he take a polygraph if it is an inadmissible test? The fact that he agreed to take the test indicates just how innocent he is."_____________________________________________________________________________________

FAIR USE NOTICESome of the information on The Awareness Center's web pages may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.

We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this update for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Some of the information on The Awareness Center's web pages may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.

We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this update for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

The resignation last week of Rabbi David Kaye from the educational program Panim, after revelations that he had solicited a 13-year-old boy online for sex, elicited the usual expressions of shock from the Jewish community. Of course, we all should be outraged when such immoral conduct is brought to light, but those who follow the Jewish world know that Kaye is hardly the first rabbi to have engaged in it in recent years.

In 2001, for example, Rabbi Jerrold Levy was sentenced to 78 months in prison for sex crimes involving teenage boys. Indeed, a 2000 photo now circulating on the Internet features Kaye, Levy, and Israel Kestenbaum — three rabbis, one from each major denomination, who were all later found to have solicited minors for sex online. And for every one case that makes the news, those of us who work in the Jewish community hear a dozen stories: the whispers about this teacher, that rabbi, and the scandal the school tried to sweep under the rug.

Rabbinic offenders have seduced both boys and girls, but one cannot help but notice that a disproportionate number of them have targeted males. There are no reliable statistics for rabbinic sexual abuse, but government studies show that in the general population, one-third of child sex abuse victims are male, even though only 3-5% of adult men identify as homosexual. Indeed, approximately 16% of boys are sexually abused before the age of 16.

What is going on? Are there suddenly more closeted gay rabbis than there were a decade ago? Or are we, like the Catholic community, merely bringing to light what has been a dark secret for many years?

It does not appear that the problem in the Jewish world is of the same magnitude as that in the Catholic one. Perhaps, as some theorize, this is because the rabbinate, with its expectation of marriage, is less attractive to closeted gay men than the celibate priesthood. Then again, we cannot know how much abuse took place when rabbinic authority was impossible to challenge, and when incidents were quietly buried. Perhaps our scandal is just beginning.

Generally, cases like that of Kaye — who has been praised, in recent days, as a decent man and a good father to his two daughters — elicit responses like "he needs help." Surely he does; how could a well-known rabbi risk everything by sending a naked photo of himself, with his face fully visible, to someone he didn't know? Merely that Kaye's judgment was so clouded bespeaks the severity of his desperation.

Yet the question we must ask ourselves is: Where did that desperation come from? Healthy people, gay or straight, do not molest 13-year-olds. Only deeply disturbed people do — and those are precisely the sorts of people created by the deception and repression of the "closet." Moreover, according to the American Medical Association, 98% of men who sexually abuse boys report that they are heterosexual. Are these really all sick, straight men? Or are they actually, in the words Kaye used when seducing his target online, "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the closet"?

Unquestionably, predators like Kaye are the ones responsible for their conduct. But they do not operate in a vacuum, and the Jewish community bears responsibility as well, for the way we perpetuate the circumstances that cause them to hate themselves, distort their sexuality into something dangerous — and, if statistics are accurate, kill themselves at the rate of 4,000 each year in the United States alone. We create "the closet," through our intolerant actions and inactions, our cruel and selective reading of Jewish law, and our endlessly proclaiming the unacceptability of a sexual orientation which is either genetically determined, or fixed so early in childhood as to be an unchangeable part of one's being. In short, we create the very monsters about whom we later profess shock.

Nor are we doing so based on religious authority. Only a minority of non-Orthodox rabbis still believe that the narrow prohibitions of Leviticus 18 extend to all the sexual behavior of gay men (and women). Yet many Jews who are quite lax about their Sabbath observance and routinely look the other way regarding intermarriage become religious fundamentalists when it comes to homosexuality. Consider your reaction to a Sabbath-breaker on the one hand — who merits the death penalty under rabbinic law — and a religious gay Jew on the other. Around whom are you more comfortable? Whom do you fully accept, and whom do you merely tolerate? And is your choice really based on religion? Or, for that matter, on reason?

The "closet" is entirely the wrong metaphor for the kind of repression which leads to acts like Kaye's. I should know — I was in the closet for 15 years, and it is a much more odious, terrible phenomenon than merely hiding in a wardrobe while you do what you oughtn't. Imagine lying to everyone you know, all the time. Imagine feeling that your heart, your way to love and relationship and sexual expression, is actually distorted, evil and broken. And imagine believing that, because of something you cannot change, God hates you.

Of course, under such circumstances, and in a world that has made clear it would reject you if it knew the truth, you would hide your sexuality — perhaps, as I did, even from yourself. Of course you would do everything you could to somehow "make yourself straight": maybe marriage, maybe seeking spiritual solace to fill an emotional gap, maybe even the thoroughly discredited, and completely ineffective, forms of "reparative therapy" being peddled within the religious community and inflicted on innocent young people every day. And of course, you would fail, because sexuality cannot be changed.

And then, without any appropriate means of expression, your sexual urges would find inappropriate ones. Personally, I never engaged in activity such as Rabbi Kaye's, and never once violated the trust of anyone, of any age. But I was hardly a healthy adult when I was in the closet. I met men for sex, not relationship. I lied about my age, my name, my background. And I rarely went on a second "date."

Today, I am happily partnered to a future rabbi, and am blessed to be in a loving, long-term relationship. That's what "coming out" does — it enables gay people to be as healthy and loving as everyone else. But as the director of a gay and lesbian Jewish organization, I receive emails every week from men and women still struggling in the closet, from all across the ideological spectrum. Charedi adults, modern Orthodox kids, women and men — I've met them all, and while none, to my knowledge, has become a predator like Kaye, all are trapped in the same web of deception, repression and desperation. Many are like powder kegs, ready to explode. Really, what do we expect will happen to someone who fights his innermost being all his life, never has a proper outlet for his sexual expression, and lies to everyone he knows?

And then there are those open secrets. The influential rabbi who was forced into 'reparative therapy' after being accused of sexual harassment by a young male student. The youth director with a past. "Everyone" knows about these secrets, yet no one does anything — even though those of us who have been in the closet know just how dangerous it is. Indeed, one of the most important public voices on the issue of Judaism and homosexuality himself has a "record" of homosexual misconduct, both on his own part and among other members of his family. Yet we pretend that none of this matters, or that we don't know what we know, or that rabbis and communal leaders are impartial about demons they themselves are battling.

Each person is responsible for his or her own conduct. But as long as we create the conditions that make misconduct all but inevitable, the right response to the scandal of Kaye is not "he needs help" — it's "we need help." We need to stop demonizing what is natural, healthy and good, using selective piety to mask our fear. We need to stop believing that what God made can be unmade through coercion or brainwashing. We need to acknowledge that the closeted-rabbi-who-everyone-knows-about may not be worthy of our trust. And we need to see that what causes scandals is not homosexuality, but its repression. Until we do these things, our exclusion and repression will continue to lead to their tragic, seemingly inexorable, results.

Jay Michaelson is director of Nehirim: A Spiritual Initiative for GLBT Jews.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

We have known for some time that sexual abuse
can lead to eating disorders -- British Eating Disorders
Association

Childhood sex abuse increases the risk of women developing
eating disorders - and can even impact on their children, a study says.

Researchers found girls abused before the age of 16
were twice as likely to develop eating disorders later in life.

The University of Bristol team also said these women
were likely to have weight concerns while pregnant and that had a knock-on
effect on the child.

The findings were published in the British Journal
of Psychiatry.

The team studied 10,000 women - one in five of whom
had being abused.

Researchers involved in the university's Children of
the 90s project found 79% of the women recalled happy childhoods.

The report said these women were less likely to worry
about their weight or develop conditions such as bulimia and anorexia later
in life.

But of those who were sexually abused, 15% showed symptoms
of an eating disorder and 30% showed concern about their weight during
pregnancy.

The researchers said this was a cause for concern,
as maternal eating problems after childbirth interfered with parenting and
child growth.

Women with excessive fears about weight and shape are
less likely to breast feed.

But the report accepted other distressful experiences
during childhood could also trigger problems.

Previous research has shown that eating disorders may
be connected to a wide range of unhappy childhood influences including parental
alcohol misuse, physical or emotional cruelty and other family problems.

Awareness

Lead author Dr Rob Senior said health professionals
needed to be aware of the pattern.

"The majority of women with concerns about weight,
shape and eating do not describe a history of abuse, and GPs or midwives
may have reservations about raising the topic."

He said the high-prevalence of concern during pregnancy
was particularly worrying because of the knock-on effects.

A spokesman for the Eating Disorders Association said
the findings were not surprising and should be viewed in context.

"We have known for some time that sexual abuse can
lead to eating disorders.

"But it is not the only, nor most common, cause. Being
teased and bullied about your weight is more likely to cause a problem.

"What is interesting about people who develop disorders
after abuse is that it is a defence mechanism; they do it so they don't draw
attention to themselves.

"They do not care about how they look, whereas others
generally do it because they are worried about how they look."

Sadness and shock seem to be the most common reactions to the news that Rockville Rabbi David Kaye was ensnared in a Dateline NBC hidden camera investigation of sexual predators on the Internet.

A former rabbi at Potomac's Congregation Har Shalom, where he had worked for 16 years, Kaye resigned last week as vice president of program after three years at the Rockville-based teen educational group Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values.

Leaders of both groups say that they never received a complaint about his behaving inappropriately with a child during his employment with their organizations.

The Dateline program, which aired last Friday evening, reported that Kaye had set up a meeting over the Internet with someone he thought was a 13-year-old boy with the intent of having a sexual encounter. The rabbi was then confronted on camera by a Dateline reporter at the Herndon house where the meeting was scheduled to take place (see sidebar, page 25).

Despite the impression left by the report, though, Kaye does not appear to be in legal jeopardy. A spokesperson for the Fairfax County Police Department said Monday that the department does not anticipate filing any charges against Kaye or many of the other men identified as potential predators in the NBC broadcast.

Officer Bud Walker, public spokesperson, said that while it is a felony in Virginia to use the Internet to solicit sex with a minor, the commonwealth would not have jurisdiction in Kaye's case. Dateline used people affiliated with an organization called Perverted Justice, whose volunteers pose as children online in order to expose potential Internet predators. But those volunteers were based in Michigan, said Walker. Kaye and many of the others caught up in the sting lived in Maryland, leaving Virginia without the ability to prosecute.

Walker called Perverted Justice's methods problematic.

The self-styled "watchdog group" says that it turns over chat logs and other information it gathers to the police. Critics, and even Dateline, have labeled the organization a group of vigilantes.

Walker said the organization uses tactics that Fairfax police officers are not permitted to employ when going undercover as children on the Internet. For instance, Walker noted that the Fairfax police can "never make initial contact" with a potential predator, but must "wait to be contacted," and can "never suggest any meeting."

He also pointed out that cases using Perverted Justice information are difficult to prosecute in court, since the police cannot guarantee that Perverted Justice has provided the complete transcripts of the alleged conversations.

Walker said that Fairfax County would be making referrals to other jurisdictions. The Montgomery County Police Department is aware of the Dateline sting, but as of Tuesday afternoon had not received any information from other jurisdictions, nor been contacted by any potential victims of Kaye, said Lucille Baur, public information officer for the department.

Kaye could not be reached for comment this week. Both his home phone number and a cell phone number posted on the Perverted Justice Web site have been disconnected. Reached last week, he had no comment.

His most recent employer, Rockville-based Panim, said in a statement this week that it "never received a single complaint by any participant" about Kaye's conduct and it has a "zero tolerance policy" on such behavior.

Panim's executive director, Rabbi Sid Schwarz, would not make himself available for an interview this week, referring calls to high-powered defense attorney Abbe Lowell, who is representing former American Israel Public Affairs Committee staffer Steve Rosen and scandal-plagued lobbyist Jack Abramoff, among others.

Lowell said that Panim will evaluate its hiring procedures to see if "more can be done" to check prospective employees' backgrounds.

He expected the review to "take as long as it takes," but said it was likely to be "weeks, not months."

Lowell added that Kaye had been a rabbi in the Washington area for more than a decade and "not an unknown quantity" when he was hired in the spring of 2002.

The attorney also said that Kaye primarily worked on programming and had "less contact directly" with teens than other Panim staffers.

Based on the lack of complaints about Kaye, said Lowell, the organization believes that "the issues [Kaye] had in his own [personal] life never crossed over" into Panim.

As for the chat transcripts in which Kaye writes that he is at work, Lowell said that "we don't accept those statements at face value," considering that the Dateline report demonstrated that Kaye had been misrepresenting himself to Panim and the community.

Lowell said that the controversy has had no effect on Panim's supporters, and that no schools have canceled scheduled programs with the organization.

Among them are the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, which sent an e-mail to the parents of juniors and seniors at the school on Monday saying that it would be sending its 11th graders to a Panim program designed exclusively for JDS students next month.

The statement said the school was "proud of its association with Panim" and "confident in the integrity and leadership of Rabbi Schwarz and the Panim leadership.

At Har Shalom, Rabbi H. David Rose said the congregation feels "great shock" at the revelations. "For people who put their trust and faith in him, it hurts," said Rose, who said he has been listening to congregants express their concerns.

Synagogue president Debbie Schapiro mailed a letter to congregants early this week, emphasizing that the congregation's "utmost concern has and always will be care of our families" and that "we are here for them."

The letter also pointed out that there have been no allegations of such inappropriate behavior in the 40-year history of the shul, but that the synagogue would be undertaking an inquiry to be certain.

Other congregants said they were shocked and sad, expressing sympathy in particular for Kaye's two grown daughters and saying they never saw any indications of inappropriate actions during his Har Shalom tenure.

"There was no sign at all" of such behavior when Kaye was at the synagogue, said Barry Perlis of Potomac, who noted his three children had gone through Hebrew school at the synagogue and had no problems with the rabbi.

One person who worked at the synagogue, however, said that Kaye had an anger management problem, often yelling and humiliating staffers. The person noted, though, that he could also turn around and be someone's best friend if he needed something almost like he had a "split personality."

Young adults who grew up as congregants at Har Shalom were taken aback by the report, but did not recall Kaye's behaving inappropriately.

Shawn Eskow of Potomac said that the news was "extremely surprising."

"Rabbi Kaye was one of my favorite rabbis," said the 22-year-old. "He always seemed friendly, comforting and welcoming, but I never would have suspected anything like this."

"I still can't believe it. You'd never believe something like this would happen to Rabbi Kaye," said one former congregant, who was confirmed at Har Shalom and now lives in New York City. "It's a real shock to see that the rabbi that you grew up with, learned and received mentorship from, could be involved in such offensive actions," said Jared Adler, 22, of Chicago, who said he was "filled with disappointment and anger" when watching the program.

In San Antonio, where Kaye spent less than six months as rabbi at Congregation Agudas Achim in 2001-02, executive director Jo Halfant said there were no reports of sexually inappropriate behavior while he was there.

She said that Kaye's quick departure came after that the congregation and the rabbi "mutually agreed it was not a good fit," noting that South Texas is a "different lifestyle" than the East Coast.

Meanwhile, the executive vice president of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly, Rabbi Joel Meyers, did not return messages left for him requesting comment.

Kaye's biography, which was quickly removed from the Panim Web site after his resignation last week, said that the rabbi had been a "leader" in the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and had been instrumental in creating a number of youth and Jewish educational initiatives.

A federation spokesperson said that Kaye's work for the federation "did not entail any direct work with teenagers." The rabbi served "as a member and later chair of both the Israel Quest committee and the Jewish educational division" of the federation," which "recommended policy and allocations related to formal and informal Jewish education," she said.

The Panim bio also said Kaye had staffed "numerous USY conventions and retreats." United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism officials said they were not aware of Kaye's participation in any USY activities in recent years, and said that "tough guidelines" are in place on the issue of sexual conduct.

Meanwhile, the Dateline report also flashed a picture on the screen of Kaye with about a dozen other rabbis, two of whom are convicted sexual offenders. The photo comes from a fall 2000 newsletter published by The HealthCare Chaplaincy and was taken after a two-week "reflection and study program of suffering, healing and hope" organized by the chaplaincy's Jewish Institute for Pastoral Care.

Vicki Polin, executive director and founder of The Awareness Center, a victims' rights organization for victims of sexual abuse in the Jewish community that has the photo posted on its Web site, said the picture could be just an very odd coincidence, but that sexual offenders often tend to find each other.

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Survivors ARE Heroes!

The Awareness Center believes ALL survivors of sex crimes should be given yellow ribbons to wear proudly.

Survivors of sexual violence (as adults and/or as a child) are just as deserving of a yellow ribbon as the men and women of our armed forces, who have been held captive as hostages or prisoners of war.

Survivors of sexual violence have been forced to learn how to survive, being held captive not by foreigners, but mostly by their own family members, teachers, camp counselors, coaches babysitters, rabbis, cantors or other trusted authority figures.

For these reasons ALL survivors of sexual violence should be seen as heroes!